I’ve seen The Rock throw down his People’s Elbow dozens of times but not like this. Now literally made of stone, he punishes a foe with a smattering of sparks. In another match, Roman Reigns, dressed as centurion, brutalize a… Continue Reading →

I’ve seen The Rock throw down his People’s Elbow dozens of times but not like this. Now literally made of stone, he punishes a foe with a smattering of sparks. In another match, Roman Reigns, dressed as centurion, brutalize a wrestler smashing him into the ground and blowing him up with grenades.

It’s exaggerated, it’s over the top, it also happens to be a new collaboration between World Wrestling Entertainment and NetherRealm Studios, the team behind the new Mortal Kombat efforts. WWE Immortals is a fighting game for iOS and Android devices that offers a new take on superstars and divas. Think of it as a Mortal Kombat take on wrestling with fighters brawling in graveyards and other arenas, performing moves that would otherwise leave a bloody mess.

Producer Fuzzy Gerdes assured me that there’s an explanation for two version of Big Show, one as a lumberjack and the other as a Warrior, and Triple H, one as a viking warrior and the other as a CEO. It deals with a magical lantern that opens the door to multiple universes. The mobile game will be free to play and launch with with 26 character cards that include variants of 14 wrestlers. Similar to Marvel: Contest of Champions, the fighting game relies on taps and swipes that translate punches and kicks in battle. Building a combo can lead to a minigame finisher.

Daniel Bryan takes on Roman Reigns, yes!

Adding depth to the combat is an Adrenaline Meter that builds during the one-fall match. Players can tap it to use a signature move or they can let it build up for an ultra-style attack. On the defensive side, players can block by pressing two fingers on the touch screen or parry and create an opening for a counterattack with a well-timed block. Where WWE Immortals gets interesting is that players must create a three-person team, and during the course of the match, they can switch them out similar to the Marvel vs Capcomgames though there are now switch-out combos.

As with all free-to-play games, there is a system to encourage players to spend real-life money. After winning matches, players earn experience points to level up their fighters and they earn in-game credits, which they use to buy card packs. As fighters earn levels, they can improve their damage and health stats. They can also power up different moves. Layered atop that are other boosts. Wrestlers can be equipped with up to three craftable items that strengthen certain stats. Teaming up wrestlers and divas with allies and rivals also produces benefits (a power to health and attack) and drawbacks (a boost to adrenaline but a decline in defense). Then there’s the one-time use cards that players can win in card packs. Some of these items give permanent stat improvements to moves or other traits.

Lastly, every fighter has a stamina bar. It goes down after each fight, and once it runs out, players won’t be able to use him or her in their three-person team. They’ll have to wait until it refills. If they can’t bide their time, the stamina meter can be refilled via a special card or item. To obtain these boosts or to quickly get in-game credits for card packs, players can spend real money for these credits. Packs could contain the character card for their favorite wrestler or it may have a card that helps them get a boost for a difficult match.

Gerdes says Nether Realms plans to expand the roster from the initial 26 character cards. There’s also plans to hold promotions themed after some of the bigger WWE events of the year. I’m crossing my fingers for this year’s Wrestlemania at Levi’s Stadium.

Mortal Kombat returned to form on consoles last year by returning to the fighting game’s roots. Riding the resurgence of genre, NetherRealm Studios borrowed elements from titles like Street Fighter IV and created a great experience. Now, the team is… Continue Reading →

Mortal Kombat returned to form on consoles last year by returning to the fighting game’s roots. Riding the resurgence of genre, NetherRealm Studios borrowed elements from titles like Street Fighter IV and created a great experience. Now, the team is bringing Mortal Kombat to the PlayStation Vita, but the developer is doing more than a straight-up port.

NetherRealm has added six hours of additional content in the form of a new challenge tower that contain new minigames that use the touchscreen and accelerometer. I was more interested in that new content when I saw the game this month at GDC. The core experience is fine and works well on the D-pad. The fact that NetherRealm included all the DLC is a plus.

Minigames such as this one where players juggle fighters using rocket launchers are a fun diversion.

TWO NEW MINIGAMES: But I had more fun with the touch-screen game called Test Your Slice. It’s Fruit Ninja clone that uses body parts instead of watermelons and apples as the objects to cut. Players use their fingers to slash at torsos and they’ll have to avoid bombs or shake the system to detonate them. In addition, there are several modifiers through the 15 missions.

It helps because each stage gets progressively harder. They end up being timed or players have to hit a certain quota. Having a Sub Zero head that freezes body parts in place helps them reach a high score. Slicing toast sets off a frenzy of body parts that’s naturally called “toasty.”

The other minigame is Test Your Balance. It puts fighters on a plank and players will have to tilt the Vita so that they don’t fall over. It’s easy at first, but the difficulty ramps up. Players can’t cheat and lay their handhelds on a level table. There are stages where players are required to tilt the system so that the meter stays within a specific area. Further on, body parts are thrown at them.

Expect a lot of cursing because players will die a lot. The graphic death scenes, of which there are several, help take the sting out of failure. They’ll see characters impaled, sliced, maimed, etc., but after players see them all, it gets redundant. I enjoyed Test Your Slice more.

You’ll have to wipe off blood that gets in the way during one challenge fight.OTHER CHALLENGES: Along with those two main minigames, the Challenge Tower also holds random stages with quirky objectives. There’s one called Mining for Gold, where players have to touch gold coins falling from the screen and avoid bombs. If too many coins fall on the ground, players lose. Then, there’s a Juggle mission where players touch rocket launchers lined up at the bottom of the screen. They fire projectiles that are supposed to keep a falling Scorpion juggled in the air. After a certain number of rockets, he explodes.

When it comes to fighting, Mortal Kombat on the Vita adds a touch-screen twist to battles in the Challenge Tower. One mission looks like a regular fight but when a fighter is hit, blood sprays on the screen and players will have to wipe off the Vita touch-screen to clear it off.

It could have been easy for NetherRealms to do a straight port of Mortal Kombat and that would have likely satisfied hard-core fans, but the developer goes the extra mile to add value with the Vita version. It may even tempt those who already own the game on console to pick it up and take their fighting on the road when it’s released this spring.

The Mortal Kombat reboot is being released April 19, and Bay Area fans have a chance to play it a little early this weekend. There’s going to be a specially designed Mortal Kombat truck rolling through the streets and stopping… Continue Reading →

The Mortal Kombat reboot is being released April 19, and Bay Area fans have a chance to play it a little early this weekend. There’s going to be a specially designed Mortal Kombat truck rolling through the streets and stopping at local Best Buys this weekend. (Let’s hope it doesn’t rain that much.) You have to be at least 17 years old to have some hands-on time with the game. Other than that, you just have to be at the following locations at these times:

For me, one of the bigger GDC surprises was the Mortal Kombat arcade stick. Fellow video game writer Eric Wittmerhaus was raving about the controller and he piqued my interest about it. Could it really be that great? When I… Continue Reading →

For me, one of the bigger GDC surprises was the Mortal Kombatarcade stick. Fellow video game writer Eric Wittmerhaus was raving about the controller and he piqued my interest about it. Could it really be that great? When I saw the controller firsthand, I was stunned. This thing is quality, but it’s also enormous and heavy as hell. I feel sorry for the GameStop people who’ll have to stock it and bring it out to waiting customers.

After getting some hands-on with the controller, there were three things to note about the Mortal Kombat arcade stick:

1) It uses Happ parts. What does this mean? Well, these are the sticks and buttons you used to mash in the old American arcades. The joysticks are the baseball bat style and the buttons are super large and concave. Putting hands on the controls brings me back. It’s instant nostalgia for those who grew up in thumbing nickels or quarters into arcade cabinet beat-em ups.

2) The manufacturer, PDP, almost begs you to mod this using a latch that opens up the stick. From there, you can see its gnarly insides. (They’re protected by a clear plastic cover to prevent, ahem, tampering.) You can put other things within the arcade stick. It seems like a good place to hide the actual game or other M-rated titles. The rest of the stick is impressive with parts being made of wood most likely. Again, it’s damn heavy. It’s also built for playing on your lap with a memory foam cushion on the bottom to make comfortable.

3) NetherRealm Studios will have to make some arcade stick specific controls because some moves are just impossible to do with the current configuration. That’s one of the things I noticed when playing with it. The LT and RB buttons are inconveniently up near the guide buttons and to pull off X-ray move, players have to awkwardly press RT and the RB buttons together. That means stretching out your hand so that it reaches both at the same time. Other than that, the controller works well. The buttons are a little springy, but I didn’t have much problems doing special moves.

The next few months or so is shaping up to be another great time for fighting games. Fresh off the success of Street Fighter IV, Capcom’s again reaching back into its past and bringing out a long-awaited sequel. Then there’s… Continue Reading →

The next few months or so is shaping up to be another great time for fighting games. Fresh off the success of Street Fighter IV, Capcom’s again reaching back into its past and bringing out a long-awaited sequel. Then there’s the return of an old Midway favorite that appears to be done right. Lastly, there’s a downloadable game that reminds me lot of Bushido Blade. All these titles were at E3 2010 last month and I had a chance to play them. Here’s a quick impression of each one.

Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds — When I first glimpsed the character designs for Capcom’s new fighting game, I wasn’t impressed. It didn’t grab me the way Street Fighter IV’s art-style immediately did. To me, the characters looked too angular and flat; they were more comic bookish than the fully developed models I was expecting. In short, they looked like a high-resolution version of what I saw in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom.

But after I played a few matches, my eyes adjusted and I didn’t mind it much. How can you when the action is so fast and there’s so much going on the screen? All you can do is try to pull of air combos, with the new dedicated button. Yes, the controls are slightly tweaked from what fans are used to. Now, there’s a button solely devoted to knocking your foes in the air, leaving them open to a follow-up with the light, medium and heavy attack buttons. In addition, there are new team aerial combos and their corresponding counters, but I didn’t use them much because I was focused on just surviving against other players.

Among the eight selectable characters — Captain America, Iron Man, Wolverine, Deadpool (Marvel side), Ryu, Morrigan, Chris Redfield, Felicia and Dante (Capcom side) — I stuck with old favorites such as Ryu and Wolverine, but I slightly mixed it up a bit with Chris Redfield and Dante (I mostly stuck with the Capcom side.). The publicist at the booth didn’t give an exact count of the roster, but he said that it’ll at least be as big as Marvel vs. Capcom 2.

As for how it played, hey, it’s Marvel vs. Capcom. The gameplay is still familiar. I found that hitting foes in the air seemed easier with a dedicated button. I relied a lot on my hyper combos, which got blocked more often than not. All I know is that I’ll need to get some practice in before the game’s released in Spring 2011.

Mortal Kombat — This was the most surprising game by far, but I mean that in a good way. After years of trying and failing to bring the fighting game into the 3D realm, Ed Boon and company finally bring the series back to its roots. They go the 2.5D route rendering their characters in polygons but keeping the action on a linear plane.

Boon said the top three things they wanted to focus on was 1) a brutal presentation, 2) a deeper fighting engine and 3) fatalities. “Those were our marching orders,” he said, and judging by what I played, his team seems to be on its way to accomplishing that. The game has little details like aging blood and wounds and injuries that register throughout the match.

When it comes to a deeper fighting engine, Mortal Kombat borrows a lot from Street Fighter IV. There’s a super meter (for lack of a better word) at the bottom of the screen and it builds up through the match. Players can use the meter to launch powered-up versions of their special moves. They can spend it on a breaker that lets them escape combos. Lastly, a full meter lets them pull off an X-ray move, which acts almost as an Ultra and when it connects, the game slows down and players will see a punch or a kick breaking bones or bruising internal organs in the process. It certainly fulfills that brutal requirement.

As for fatalities, they’re still there and more vicious than ever. I’ve seen foes being knocked into spiked pits. I’ve seen Kung Lao saw people in half with his bladed hat. Each of the planned 24 characters will have at least two fatalities. Thankfully, there no animalities, babalities or friendships. (Those cheesy extras knocked the series of its stride.) This is a game that’s more serious and it returns to the storylines of the first three games. In a way, it’s a retelling that’s a little off. The story is ignited when a defeated Raiden manages to send a message to his past self, warning him of the danger. I’m assuming it creates an alternate timeline and that players fight through.

Lastly, there’s going to be a tag team mode, where players pick two characters and switch them in and out throughout the match. I’m sure there’s going to be much more revealed along with potential DLC as we move closer to Mortal Kombat’s spring 2011 release and I really can’t wait. This was my favorite fighter of the show.

Deadliest Warrior — Yeah, I know that this downloadable game doesn’t have the reputation of the other two fighters, but it does intrigue me because of how it resembles Bushido Blade in some cases.

Loosely based on the Spike TV Show, Deadliest Warrior: The Game pits fighters from the past against each other. There won’t be anything unbalanced like Marines vs. Spearmen; instead, the game matches warriors from preindustrial times.

They’ll be fighting in a 3D arena and trading blows close up with knives and swords, at a distance with ranged weapons and in between with midrange weapons. Players can maim each other by chopping their arms or slow them down by slashing at their legs. This is incorporated into the general strategy of the game, where speed and movement are vital for some characters.

When I played, I had to go with a ninja vs. pirate. (I really needed to know who would win.) Both had their own strategies. Ninjas relied on speed and their unblockable black egg attack to stun opponent for a kill. On the other hand, pirates relied on the granado and a potential one-hit kill with their flintlock pistol to keep ninjas at bay. To prevent players from just spamming these attacks, unblockable attacks take away from stamina. Once the stamina is gone, they can’t use it anymore. As for the pistols and throwing stars, the pirates and ninjas both have three of them, respectively. That’s how ranged goes for most fighters unless they’re using arrows or spears, which can be reused if you can get to one.

Other warriors have armor or a shield, which also can impact a match. Characters like knights or spartans trade movement for better protection, and it changes how they play. They have to face their opponents and try not to be outflanked. I’m not sure how Deadliest Warrior will balance all these variables, but from what I’ve played, it looks like it’s going to do a decent job.

I’ll have a fuller impression when the game comes out next week on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

I spent more time in appointments and on the floor. I was expecting huge things from Ubisoft, but its booth and its offerings were adequate. What I was really impressed with was Mortal Kombat and Marvel vs. Capcom 3. They’re… Continue Reading →

I spent more time in appointments and on the floor. I was expecting huge things from Ubisoft, but its booth and its offerings were adequate. What I was really impressed with was Mortal Kombat and Marvel vs. Capcom 3. They’re both two huge fighting games that are coming out next year. Lastly, Sony had by far the most immersive 3D experience I ever had with Gran Turismo 5. The game even had head tracking using the PlayStation Eye camera. Oh yeah, Twisted Metal on the PlayStation 3 was pretty sweet, too.

The Mortal Kombat maker announced today that it has filed for Chapter 11 reorganization for its U.S. operations. In a press release, the company blamed the move on a change in ownership that happened last fall. That change pushed forward the deadline for Midway to pay off some of its debt, an obligation “Midway anticipated it would be unable to satisfy,” the company said in a statement.

“This was a difficult but necessary decision,” Matt Booty, holder of Midway’s hat trick of titles — president, chairman and CEO — said in the statement.

Then, in one of the more humorous assertions ever from a company in such straits, Booty put a positive spin on things: “Midway enters this process with strong underlying fundamentals, as evidenced by solid fourth quarter sales that exceeded expectations.”

Right. The underlying fundamentals are so strong that the company is seeking bankruptcy protection.

The reality is that the only surpise about Midway’s Chapter 11 filing is that it took the company so long to get here. Midway hasn’t had a profitable year in a decade. In the first nine months of last year, the company lost $144.7 million on just $104.7 in sales.

Let’s repeat and rephrase that, shall we? Through the first three quarters of last year the company lost more money than it took in in revenue — a pretty hard trick to do. And while many companies like to minimize such red ink by pointing out much of it came from stock options accounting and other “paper” losses, that’s hard to do at Midway.

According to the company’s financial filings, Midway burned through $88 million in cash in the first nine months of last year, leaving it with a mere $10.4 million in cash at the end of September. This decade, the once venerable company has been an unbelievable cash destruction machine: From the beginning of 2000 through the end of September last year, Midway’s operations had burned through $505 million in cash. Indeed, the company hasn’t generated any positive cash flow in any year since 2000.

The only reason Midway lasted this long was because of the folly of Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone. Redstone started loading up on Midway stock early in this decade and eventually owned the vast majority of Midway shares. Redstone then pawned off much of his stake — and the debt he amassed buying it — on to National Amusements, a company he controlled. Along the way, he and National Amusements bankrolled Midway to the tune of tens of millions of dollars to keep the game maker afloat.

Facing his own cash crunch with National Amusements reportedly $1.6 billion in debt, Redstone sold off his Midway stake last fall for pennies on the dollar to Mark Thomas, a private investor.

Midway stressed in its announcement that the bankruptcy filing only affects its U.S. operations, that its international business will go on as before. International sales accounted for about 44 percent of Midway’s sales in the first nine months of last year.

]]>http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2009/02/12/shocker-midway-files-for-bankruptcy/feed/9midway_logoThe Single Greatest Soundboard Of All Timehttp://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2008/11/26/the-single-greatest-soundboard-of-all-time/
http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2008/11/26/the-single-greatest-soundboard-of-all-time/#commentsWed, 26 Nov 2008 22:16:26 +0000http://www.ibabuzz.com/videogames/?p=2837You may not know who Hernan Sanchez is, but you know his voice. Hernan Sanchez, ladies and gentlemen, is the Mortal Kombat announcer.Â The booming voice behind “Finish him!” and other legendary phrases. Maxim was kind enough to record him… Continue Reading →

The developers of Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe have been slowly trickling out additions to the character list for some reason, which makes it all the more surprising they included the complete list in the achievements. Why go through all… Continue Reading →

The developers of Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe have been slowly trickling out additions to the character list for some reason, which makes it all the more surprising they included the complete list in the achievements. Why go through all the drama then tell the world?

Anyway, long story short we all know now. Or at least we will after you click that link down there. I’m hiding it in case anyone out there wants to be surprised for some reason.

No Johnny Cage or Goro which is pretty surprising, and I’m not sure how many people were on the edge of their seat waiting for Shazam at this point, but it’s a pretty good list. Not that any of them can beat Superman…

]]>http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2008/09/11/mk-vs-dc-roster-accidentally-announced/feed/0MK vs DCHilarious Mortal Kombat parodyhttp://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2008/09/09/hilarious-mortal-kombat-parody/
http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2008/09/09/hilarious-mortal-kombat-parody/#respondTue, 09 Sep 2008 18:06:08 +0000http://www.ibabuzz.com/videogames/?p=1629See more gamer videos at PWN or DIE When I first saw this video on Pwn or Die, I was fooled into thinking this was the real thing, but about 30 seconds into the match things got a little weird.… Continue Reading →

When I first saw this video on Pwn or Die, I was fooled into thinking this was the real thing, but about 30 seconds into the match things got a little weird. I didn’t know Shao Kahn was kinky like that and I didn’t know that Sub Zero was so, uh, open. But what amazes me is how the actor who plays Liu Kang can keep spinning his head in a daze for that long. Funny stuff.